Christine Grandy

This was entirely predictable in an environment where there is little to no spare cash in universities to cover research expenses.

What the latest HESA data tells us about university finances The headlines are well known, but the full HESA release adds a lot of detail to a generally bleak picture. David Kernohan has the charts

It's pretty bleak, but this is a useful visualisation of UK HE finances...

wonkhe.com/blogs/what-t...

Does a ChatGPT query really use ten times more energy than a Google search? Does training any AI model emit as much CO2 as 5 cars? and can AI help us reduce global GHG emissions by 10%? 🤔

We tracked down the origins of these numbers 🕵‍♀️ and wrote a paper about it!

arxiv.org/abs/2506.15572

This is fantastic.

Yikes. Even for them, that's bad.

Direkte: Containerskip på grunn utenfor Byneset Vi sender direkte fra Byneset der et containserskip har gått på grunn.

The regional newspaper has a live feed going, btw. Might be geolocked, but if it isn't you can see the progress (or lack of it) pretty well.

Poster advertising the 2025 Gender & History Lecture, which will be given by Dr Onni Gust. Information about the date, time and location can be found at the bottom of the poster, along with a QR to scan.

We are pleased to share the details for the Annual Gender & History Lecture, which will be given by Dr Onni Gust. Their talk is titled 'Kin: transgender history with and beyond the human'.

May 15, 2025, 15:00 - 16:30 (In person and Online)

Register here 👇

ticketpass.org/event/ELMPHJ...

Heartened to see that close to 900 fellow academics and educators have already signed our letter in support of trans rights, trans wellbeing & trans inclusion, and against essentialist, anti-scientific, racialised & regressive views of womanhood. Please do read, share & sign! tinyurl.com/mud7va29

Don't be sorry

Shout out to Carleton who calls it like they see it on Poilievre. And I'm here for Mark Carney's crinkly eyes and economic acuity.

Both intrigued and apprehensive of what could possibly populate the Guardian's live-blog of the Canadian election.

Hawley–Smoot Tariff - Ferris Bueller's Day Off. YouTube video by International School History

Oh for the moments when tariffs made up the stuff of dull history jokes.

I feel this. Solidarity and good luck Lucie!

It looks like they just fed their 'model' into a standard dataset to get the tariffs - hence they have ended up 'recognising' Taiwan and tariffing uninhabited islands. It looks like this is the dataset they used www.census.gov/foreign-trad.... And it's certainly the one ChatGPT links to ;)

Linda Williams, Who Introduced Pornography to Academia, Dies at 78 One of the first to write seriously about a fraught subject, she also played a major role in developing the field of film studies and feminist film theory.

Beautiful piece on Linda Williams (1946-2025 💔) in the NY Times. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/30/a...

For folks without institutional log in, some details of the conditions under which universities are supposed to emergency notify Research England:

Lecturer in Digital History  at UCL Looking for a new job opportunity in academia? Check out this job opening for a Lecturer in Digital History  on jobs.ac.uk!

Lecturer in Digital History 
UCL - History Department #skystorians 🗃️www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DMI974/l...

Meme of Academic Coach Taylor with the advice: ‘You know what a first book is? Practice for a better one’. Coach Taylor appears to be pleading with the player to put everything into perspective, as all authors need to do.

Front cover of Vanished. Features an ornate frame inside which there is a nineteenth-century print. In the foreground are a turbaned Indian man astride an Asian elephant, and Native and settler, and pine tree. In mid frame, a mastodon skeleton towers over all the other subjects. In the background is a mountainous landscape, with a river flowing through it. In the sky, there is a lonely passenger pigeon. At the top, the sky, author name, and book title are are framed by leaves intruding into the frame.

Contents page of the book. Prologue: Extinction’s Pasts Part One: Peopling Extinction 1. Exit, Pursued by a Mastodon 2. The Last of her People 3. The Dispossessor’s Lament 4. Humans before Humans 5. Daisy’s Dying Legacy Part Two: Empire’s Endlings 6. Red Alert! 7. Catastrophe Strikes 8. Pinosaur Redux 9. Martha’s Resurrection 10. Hope for Leviathan Epilogue: Extinction’s Futures

Four advance reviews for Vanished as follows: Illuminating and disturbing in equal measure. A poignant and powerfully written account of the intellectual revolution that birthed the concept of extinction; a concept deployed to both justify and animate colonialism and even extermination. A vital and important book -- David Olusoga A marvellous, troubling, moving and important book lit with hope, Vanished is an intellectually acute history of both the idea and the reality of extinction. In a series of fascinating examples ranging from the fates of entire peoples to the remains of a single bird in a museum, Qureshi illumines how our ideas of extinction have been forged and shaped by myriad things, from the intellectual debates of eighteenth-century naturalists to the brutal history of colonialism and the political context of the Cold War. I learned so much from Vanished and am so grateful for it -- Helen Macdonald A compelling homage to living and extinct beings, Qureshi’s masterpiece is a superbly written, urgent and heart racing volume. Unweaving the threads of centuries of teleological explanations, imperial scientific approaches and offering a new path to understanding mass extinction is a stroke of genius. Vanished is enthralling, devastating and yet empowering -- Olivette Otele One of our most innovative historians guides us with grace, humility and conviction through the daunting, tangled thickets of species extinction and human extermination. Qureshi warns us that scientific advancement and enlightenment are not necessarily compatible but encourages us that they can be -- Alan Lester

T-80 days, but roaring and ready to land!

A huge thanks to some truly roarsome peeps for reading and sharing their kind words:
@davidolusoga.bsky.social
@hjm.bsky.social
@historianmemory.bsky.social
@alanlester.bsky.social

Please do share.
Info & preorder links @ www.penguin.co.uk/books/309254...

Do you like humanities data? Do you like project documentation that goes into quite a bit of detail about what that data is/are*, the methodologies used, the decisions that were made, and the alternatives that weren't? Then hoo boy do we have the pdf for you!

*delete as appropriate

Contribute Interested in publishing an article or podcast with History Workshop? Find out how to contribute to our digital magazine of radical history.

This week, we are launching a new series on "History & Higher Education in Crisis".

We are inviting articles on:
🎓 the history & origins of this crisis
🔮 its impact on research, methodologies, specialisms & teaching
✊ building solidarities & collective action

www.historyworkshop....

A Decade of Crisis The UK's universities are in crisis. Dave Hitchcock on how the sector became 'broken' and why it must be understood as an interdependent system.

UK universities are in crisis.

Dave Hitchcock (@davehitchcock.bsky.social) on how the sector became 'broken' and why it must be approached as an interdependent system.

www.historyworkshop....

Right. Some rather terrifying/bat-shit crazy insight from the NY times into thinking on Canada's border and US-Can 1908 (!) agreements on the great lakes. I hate this moment so much. web.archive.org/web/20250308...

Provocations from the Humanities for Generative AI Research This paper presents a set of provocations for considering the uses, impact, and harms of generative AI from the perspective of humanities researchers. We provide a working definition of humanities res...

Already a time capsule, but back in January a bunch of us working at the intersection of the humanities and AI/ML came together to sketch out eight provocations from the humanities for genAI research. Here's a 🧵 1/

arxiv.org/abs/2502.19190

**Call for Papers** Public History in an Age of Anxiety CPH Annual Conference, Belfast, 2025

A new life for ‘British Printed Images to 1700’ Laura Sangha This post introduces our new mini-series Visual Culture in early modern England. Guest posts in the mini-series will be published over the course of the next month – we will add links …

ICYMI: the many-headed monster has just launched a new mini-series on Visual Culture in #EarlyModern England.

Over the next month we celebrating the relaunch of British Printed Image to 1700 by publishing guest posts on the theme.

1st post tomorrow (Thurs)!🗃️

manyheadedmonster.com/2025/02/24/a...

Research collaboration The British Library offers opportunities for researchers to collaborate to create new knowledge, with a particular focus on the British Library’s collection, services and infrastructure.

Our PhD Placement Scheme is BACK!

Call for applications for 3-6 month placements at The British Library. All current PhD students registered with a UK university are eligible. Deadline 21st Feb, 5pm.

For more information, & how to apply, please see our temporary website: www.bl.uk/more/researc...

Big corporations own a lot of Canadian Media

Here's a Starter Pack of independent Canadian media outlets

go.bsky.app/7ce9PDR

Some of my favourites in here include @thenarwhal.ca @nationalobserver.bsky.social @canadaland.com @canadahealthwatch.bsky.social , @thehilltimes.bsky.social

The new school into which the remaining Humanities departments are to be merged is going to be the School of Global Humanities.

Meanwhile, global languages will no longer be taught there.

Job - Assistant Professor in Rural North American History - University of Guelph The History Department at the University of Guelph invites applications for a tenure-track position at the Assistant Professor level in Rural North American History. The appointment will commence on J...

Here’s a great job opportunity at my alma mater, with a focus on pre-20th century history and a commitment to recognizing digital/public facing projects. Someone go help this amazing department continue building the best rural history program in North America! niche-canada.org/2025/01/27/j...

Right?? Far too much discussion of the contents at our Humanities and Heritage xmas party this year.